Agnosticism vs. Atheism

The last part of this is where the problem comes in. You don't know what characteristics god is supposed to have. While I agree that most, if not all, the descriptions of god I know of are either logically impossible or unknownable, what you can't know is that ALL god concepts share these characteristics. I can think of many beings that are logically possible and, if they existed, would be detectable, that I would consider gods. I agree, which is why I don't hold this position. From where I am sitting it appears that this is exactly what you are doing. The god comcepts you have heard are unknowable, therefore you assume that ALL god concepts are unknowable. God could also have these same characteristics, it is just that those concepts we have in abundance currently don't have them, that doesn't mean that they can't. Just for interest, I have heard some descriptions of elves that would place them in the same boat as most people descriptions of god, although the elves weren't omni-anything. See above. Just because god is generally defined as supernatural, does mean that a god can't be natural.I agree with your last statement, it just appeared to me that you were ruling out ANY posible god concept as unknowable, without knowing all posible god concepts.------------------
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Crashfrog, And how do you know that the God is significant vs. insignificant? How would you determine what facts are attributable to a significant God? Enter the fuzzy unfalsifiable world of ID. I don't think you'll find any evidence that'll prove God doesn't exist, either, so transitional forms & evidence that disproves God are on the same level according to you. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Who are you to be telling the universe how active or significant of a God it has? Secondly, absence of evidence isn't of evidence of absence. It simply, logically, is NOT. It is an argument from ignorance; because God hasn't been proven, it is false. There's a fallacy of composition/division thrown in as well, depending on who's making what argument. It isn't, how do you attribute facts to not being the work of a God? I put it to you that within a logical framework, you can't.Well, I've made the same challenge to Jack, provide a testable falsifiable hypothesis (with positive evidece) that God doesn't exist. I think you'll find that finding evidence to reject God with is on about the same par as ID.I think the salient point is, when there is no evidence of something, there isn't anything you can do to raise or lower the tentativity of that things non-existence (think about it).Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."[This message has been edited by mark24, 09-23-2003]

Hi Ned, Actually, I agree, but for the purposes of demonstration, the analogy was good. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. It was difficult to think of an evolutionary example for precisely the reason you mention, all those awkward corroborating facts. Perhaps a better analogy would be abiogenesis? Anyway....Mark[This message has been edited by mark24, 09-23-2003]

Hi Mark24, I'm not calling your position intellectual cowardice, I'm calling the original Agnostic position intellectual cowardice. As I described in my original post their's is a position of 'no knowledge before death', yours is 'no god, but can't be sure' (which I'd call Atheism). That depends of course on the exact god in question. But I think we can deal with all of them:Nearly all god concepts require a dualist mind(or soul)-body concept. As we develop our neuroscience further we drive this concept closer and closer to impossibility. Not to mention the problems with dualism and evolution.Many god concepts involve a specified creation act. These are falsified by our knowledge of the earth's formation, the big bang and evolution.Almost all god concepts involve intervention by that god in the real world. That intervention would be observable. It is not observed, therfore the god is falsified. Note that is not 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. If a hypothesis requires the presence of certain observables and those observables are not observed then the hypothesis is falsified.Finally, we don't need god to explain anything we do observe (although some of them we are yet to explain through scientific means). And if something is fully explained by known phenomena it falsifies all alternative explanations. I disagree. I think I have an awful lot of evidence against the existence of god. From the problem of evil, through the diversity of religion, the failure of dualism to the properties of the natural world. Everything is exactly as you would expect from a world without god, and not as you would expect from a world with god.Not 100% yet. But we're getting there.Mr. Jack.

Well, I would ask the person who is asking me if God exists or not. Or I would ask people who believe in god whether or not their god had activity in the physical world or not. A statistically significant pattern of interventions to a statistically significant portion of the population, for whom the only common factor was their belief in the same god. Says you. I say it is. I say that absence of evidence is exactly what we would expect of a non-existent entity, especially an entity that if it did exist, would leave significant evidence. Yes, you can't deduce from a position of ignorance. But I'm saying you can infer from a position of knowing what you don't know; that there's no evidence for god where we would expect to find it if god existed.Granted this only works with the definitions of god that we know of. The lack of evidence for any god that has been thought of is no evidence at all for the lack of gods yet unthought of. Once you've thought up those gods, though, I can come up with potential evidence that they should be leaving, if they exist. If certain, easily identifiable groups of people never succumbed to disease, violent crime, and other random, uncontrollable misfortunes, that would be evidence of the intervention of god. If people of faith had near-universally consistent ideas about what god says on any subject, that would be evidence for god. If there was only one kind of religious experience that people had, that would be evidence for god.That none of those things is true is evidence against the existence of any god popularly held to exist. It's not evidence against all gods, but I never said it would be. There are some gods that I can't prove don't exist. They're just totally useless gods that nobody feels the need to be particularly worshipful of. When you capitalize "God", I assume you're talking about the Chrisitan God of the Bible. Such a hypothesis about his existence might be: "If God exists, random misfortunes won't happen to those who are faithful to him." The null hypothesis would be "if God doesn't exist, misfortunes will happen at random, to believers and non-believers alike." Since that's largely the case, we can accept the null hypothesis: God doesn't exist.(If you're response is "maybe God just doesn't care", that's fine, but that's moving the goalposts. The God of the Bible would care, and that's the God we were talking about.)

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When you capitalize "God", I assume you're talking about the Chrisitan God of the Bible. Such a hypothesis about his existence might be: "If God exists, random misfortunes won't happen to those who are faithful to him." The null hypothesis would be "if God doesn't exist, misfortunes will happen at random, to believers and non-believers alike." Since that's largely the case, we can accept the null hypothesis: God doesn't exist.

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(If you're response is "maybe God just doesn't care", that's fine, but that's moving the goalposts. The God of the Bible would care, and that's the God we were talking about.)

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Aha, but for many of us Christians, we have had God "answer our prayers", and had our lives transformed by God. Now that hypothesis, of course, isn't exactly 'suitable'. In fact, for many Christians, their lives have been made all the harder for their belief; however having experienced God's love and forgiveness, and God's strength persevere.Many of us, from life experiences, have concluded that God does exist; not from philosophical or theological arguments.

blitz77 writes:

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Many of us, from life experiences, have concluded that God does exist; not from philosophical or theological arguments.

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But so have followers of every other god out there. That's why they continue to have followers.Why does your "life experience" showing that your god exists trump theirs?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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But what evidence would be sufficient?

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For non-existence, there isn't any sufficient evidence. Think about how you'd show that something doesn't exist in a limited set. "6" does not exist in "1,2,3,4,5." You can tell because you can see the whole set and simply compare. It is simple deduction. The problem is that with the universe-- meaning all that exists-- you can't see the whole set. Thus, any claim to non-existence is based on insufficient evidence. Claims of existence are different. One cat and you know that at least one cat exists. You can limit a set by other means- say, "things in two dimensions" or "non-contradictory things." This is where science operates-- within the very limited set of human experience. We have no choice, really. Claiming that within our knowledge there is no Puffinstuff is one thing. Claiming that there is no Puffinstuff at all, is quite another.

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Since it is possible for something to fail to exist, it must be possible to determine non-existence.

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Sure, if you know everything about everything and know with certainty that you know everything. I'm not holding my breath.

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How is this to be done if not by reaching the conclusion that there's way less evidence - none, in fact - than we would expect if the thing existed?

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This is logically flawed, crash. In fact, it is 'Intro. to Logic' material. That is what I was trying to explain in my previous post to you. I think you are wanting to use the formulation that "if something exists then it will leave evidence." This is logically equivalent to "if there is no evidence then it doesn't exist." Though this formulation makes a lot of common sense, it doesn't work. You can't know that all things that exist will leave evidence, especially since our perspective is limited and probably always will be. You have to use the formulation that "if there is evidence, then something exists." This is not equivalent to the previous formulations, and lack of evidence will not allow you to prove non-existence.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

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Never heard of anyone TASTING God

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You should read some of the world's mystics-- St. Theresa of Avila, for example.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

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The vast, vast scope of religous experience by humanity implies that no, they do not.

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The vast majority of mystics from various religions do agree, however, to a surprising degree.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

I would like to point out that I've taken Intro to Logic, and none of this was on the syllabus. Actually I'm trying to use the specific forumlation "If the Christian God of the Bible exists, then He will leave evidence on this world." I'm not saying I know everything about every dark corner of the universe, or the evidence that could conceivably be there. But the God we're talking about wouldn't leave the evidence in a corner, it'd be here on Earth, in front of us.If that God existed it would be obvious to the most casual observer, if He did things like it says he does in the Bible.I'll try and be clearer. I'm not arguing against all possible ideas of god, just one. The biblical one. If a god like in the bible existed, there would be evidence galore for it. That we instead find none at all is more than enough reason to say that such a god doesn't exist. Well, I agree that I can't know that, but I can infer it to a reasonable degree of accuracy. After all, all the things that we know exist have left evidence that they did so. While it's not certain, it's highly likely that anything that exists will follow the same pattern.If you can show me something that exists without leaving nearly as much evidence as we expect, then I'll be amienable to changing my mind.

Easily explained by altered states of conciousness, like self-hypnosis. They all have the same kind of brains, after all.

If God "answers our prayers" then why is it that Christians suffer just as much non-Christians? Why is it that no one has come forward with undeniable evidence of a miracle performed by God?Everything that God does seems to be psychosomatic. Some claim that He cured them of alcoholism and/or drug abuse yet just as many people do it without God's help. Some claim that God cured their cancer yet many people's cancer goes into remission with claiming it was God. Everything that God does we (humanity) can do better. If the only thing that God does is provide emotional support then He can easily be supplanted by family and support groups.

I think this about sums this conversation up:Kinja"God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Body: 'No,' Says God"------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Crashfrog,I think I have probably gone about the significant/non-significant god business the wrong way. The fact is, neither Christians nor anyone else has any idea what characteristics a god may have. They may presume to know, & the best you can do is to falsify those presumptions, but that’s all you do. You haven’t falsified god.For example, as you rightly point out, a groups assumption that their god treats them favourably can be falsified by simply showing that that group has no advantage over non-religious people, but all you’ve shown is that their presumption is wrong, not that a god doesn’t exist. I understand the difference, but it is still a logical flaw. A lack of evidence is not positive evidence, the scientific method requires positive evidence with which to make inferences, a lack of evidence does not allow that kind of inference because it it essentially embodies a logical fallacy. In other words, falsification requires positive evidence.To give an obvious example of that line of reasoning that demonstrates it to be false; before giant squids had been discovered, it was impossible to falsify their existence on the basis that there was no evidence in favour of their existence, which is evidenced by their actual existence.It still amounts to the same thing, a positive assertion with no positive evidence, ie an argument from ignorance. You are still deducing from a position of ignorance. The only fact that you have to report is that you have no positive evidence of god, & that isn't a falsification. I have no idea what a God/s characters may be, neither does anyone else, regardless of what they think. It isn't mine, or anyone else’s job to furnish you with them. If you want to falsify god in this way it is incumbent on you to determine gods characteristics, no one else knows them, & armed with that knowledge, falsify them...... No, not really, the capitalisation is a bad habit. I’m talking about the falsification of god or gods, whether they are allegedly known to man, or not. Again you assume that christians have knowledge of their god & think him benevolent. So what if he isn't benevolent? All you have actually falsified is that god is benevolent, not it’s existence.I’ll reword slightly, produce a testable falsifiable hypothesis (with positive evidence) that a god or gods don't exist.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."